Mark Esper: 'Cool War Brewing With China' and US

Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper this week warned of a “cool war brewing with China” due to increasing economic and political competition with the United States.

Esper, during an interview with Punchbowl News founder Jake Sherman on Monday evening at the SALT conference in New York City, said that American officials need to act as global leaders and not shrink from the responsibility.

“I think we’re finally waking up to the strategic threat that China presents us,” Esper said. “I do think you’re going to see strategic decoupling in the most high-end of items. Semiconductors comes to mind because that’s already happening.”

He went on to praise President Joe Biden’s “reasonably good” policies towards China and other Asian countries but gave him lower marks for his work in regards to Ukraine.

“I give him credit for pulling together the allies when Ukraine was first invaded by Russia, but I think a failure of the administration has been time and time again to deny the Ukrainians what they needed when they needed it to beat back the Russians,” Esper said.

The former Defense Secretary went on to compare Russia and China and their efforts to gain power in their regions.

“It’s not just about one country, a bigger country attacking a smaller neighbor,” he said. “What it does is really speak to the bigger issue and that is the autocracies of the world gaining power and threatening their weaker neighbors, the democracies of the world. So you have Russia and Ukraine and of course, the analog in Asia is China and Taiwan, the smaller democratic neighbor.”

Esper, who served as Secretary of Defense under former President Donald Trump, noted that he isn’t particularly enthusiastic about voting for Biden, but said he definitely won’t vote for Trump.

“Maybe things will change over the next six months,” he said. “I’m not going to pull that lever until I have to pull that lever, but I know I won’t be pulling it for Donald Trump.”